Marc Myers writes daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings

January 2014

January 14, 2014

Singer Carol Stevens has a terrific phone voice. It's identical to her singing voice in the late '50s—husky, feminine and full of character. Naturally, it was a pleasure interviewing her—both for the content and just to hear her articulate her points. [Photo of Carol Stevens in the '60s]

Carol in the '60s and beyond continued to sing at clubs in New York and New England. She performed with Jimmy Giuffre and others. She also was married to Norman Mailer. But for this interview, Carol preferred to stick with her early years; her album, That Satin Doll, from 1957; and her appearance in a TV pilot in 1959 called After Hours, with the cream of New York jazz musicians at the time. Let me show it to you now...

In Part 2, Carol talks about the years immediately after her album was released and the clip you just viewed...

JazzWax: After the album came out, where did your manager Phil Moore book you? Carol Stevens: All over. He sent me to Canada, where I worked with the Canadian Jazz Quartet. The place I worked in Toronto was called Le Cabaret, which was originally a bank. The review that was written about That Satin Doll was printed and placed on every table. Phil also arranged for me to appear in a TV pilot for a jazz show.

JW: Was that After Hours?CS: Yes. If I recall, we taped the pilot in 1959, not 1961. [Photo above of Carol Stevens in the '60s]

JW: How did you wind up in it?CS: One day Phil told me he had a TV pilot of a jazz show lined up. I had to be on location at 6 a.m. I knew William B. Williams, the New York disc jockey who was doing the voiceover, and a few of the guys in the band.

JW: Did you know how the After Hours scene was going to be set up?CS: I knew who was going to be there before I arrived and the song I was going to sing, but we never rehearsed. The producer just said, “You'll make an entrance.” I knew Barry Galbraith and Milt Hinton, of course, since they had been on my album. But I had never met Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins [pictured above], Johnny Guarnieri or Cozy Cole. I was to enter the club, sit down at a table and then go up and sing one song.

JW: Were you nervous, given who was up there?CS: Before any performance, I always had a physical thing that went on. I usually had such butterflies. But I knew that if I didn’t have them, there was something dead inside of me. After the first notes, they left me entirely.

JW: What happened during the taping?CS: I sang Taking a Chance on Love with the band and then went in the back and sat down on the break. Roy cozied up next to me and we made a connection. He said, "You know, you and I ought to do something together. Look what I did for Anita. We can do something, baby." He started singing Just You, Just Me. Well, the producer heard what we were doing and said, “Hey, let’s start rolling the camera.” I’ve always hated my performance on that song.

JW: Why?CS: I’m not a scatter. And I’m so embarrassed by the tiara they made me wear. I was only supposed to do Taking a Chance on Love.

JW:Just You, Just Me is fun, though. CS: I was caught off-guard and didn’t have a chance to think about what I wanted to do. I never felt comfortable trying to scat. I simply wasn’t good at it. But Roy could scat, wow.

JW: And the other extras in the clip—did they really work at the club where the pilot was taped?CS: The dancers were pros. I'm not sure about the waiter and the woman. [Photo above of Carol Stevens and husband Norman Mailer in the '60s]

JW: What was going on between Hawkins and Eldridge during Just You, Just Me?CS: It seemed that Hawk wouldn’t let him in to solo. Roy was ticked. Hawk thought Roy was taking over the session and didn’t like it. That was my impression, at least. I could be wrong.

JW: Even though the TV pilot didn’t get picked up, your album was successful. Why didn't it lead to more recordings?CS: Phil got an offer from Atlantic. I loved Nesuhi Ertegun [pictured above]. He wanted me to record again. But Phil told me he turned it down to wait for better deals with other labels, which never materialized. That was a shame.

JW: What did you do in the early ‘60s?CS: I fielded all sorts of offers. I did an ad for Duke cigarettes that paid $20,000. I don’t read music, so I asked the piano player to play the jingle a few times until I had it down. We cut it in just 20 minutes. I was amazed by the money. I had a husky voice and hip sound that other advertisers dug. Duke led to ads for Score Hair Crème, Breck shampoo, Rheingold beer and Harveys Bristol Cream with the MJQ and with Toots Thielemans.

JW: Voiceovers really paid well, wow.CS: They did. The first one allowed me to have my son David come up from Philadelphia and live with me in New York. Previously, I couldn't afford a bigger place. I originally had lived on 57th St and loved it. The building had many one-room artists’ studios, so a lot of photographers and theater people lived there. But when David came up, I had moved to the Upper West Side opposite the Dalton School, before it moved to the East Side. I had a huge two-bedroom apartment there with a dining room. I was probably spending a fortune. [Pictured above: Carol Stevens recently with her daughter Maggie Mailer]

JW: Did you continue to sing?CS: Yes. Mostly in New England, where I had moved by then. Norman [Mailer] loved my voice.

January 13, 2014

A little over a year ago, I came across a fascinating album by a female vocalist named Carol Stevens. The album, recorded in 1957, was That Satin Doll (Atlantic). What made the album so special was that the singer used her voice like an instrument on several songs—tonally improvising along to the melody. Her timbre also was terrific—a deep, husky, sexy, hurt sound that seemed to have survived a real-life film noir. And her phrasing was so seductive—curling around melodies like a curious kitten greeting a shin. Naturally I had to see if Carol was reachable. [Photo above of Carol Stevens in the late 1950s by Phil Moore]

She was, and I sent along an email, wondering why she had recorded only one album, given her lovely and strong first LP. Carol emailed back, saying that while she was flattered, she wasn't quite ready to chat. I could respect that and told her to check back when she felt more comfortable. Then a few months ago, Carol sent another email, saying she had been following JazzWax for some time, loved it and was ready to talk. We struck up an email friendship and, a few weeks ago, we spoke for the first time by phone.

It turns out Carol not only recorded a terrific album in '57 but she also was in a TV pilot in 1959 with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge.

In Part 1 of my conversation with Carol, the vocalist talks about her early years and her move to New York in the mid-1950s...

JazzWax: Where were you born?Carol Stevens: I was born in Philadelphia. We moved to Ardmore in the suburbs when I was very young.

JW: Did your parents love music? CS: Oh yes. My mother told me I was conceived while she was listening to Cab Calloway. I bask in the joy of knowing that. My parents told me I used to walk around the block at age 3 singing. When I was 16, an uncle sent me to a voice coach who taught me how to breathe from the diaphragm. Unfortunately he had his hands all over me, which ended my lessons.

JW: When did you start listening to jazz? CS: On the radio when I was young. I quickly found that I lived for music—and literature. I read all the time and knew every lick on every record I owned. I loved Woody Herman's band and all the great singers—Billie, Sarah, Ella, Carmen and others.

JW: Did you sing in high school?CS: Yes. I sang How Deep Is the Ocean in a high school play wearing a slinky velvet gown. Everyone looked at me as though I was something different. A day or so later I received a note at the house from someone who had been in the audience. He wanted me to join his non-union band.

JW: Did you?CS: Yes. It was my first break. We played local country clubs. Lena Horne was my absolute favorite then—I was crazy for her. There was some resemblance and I tried to emulate her. Years later I met her a few times in New York where we both had club dresses fitted. I gave her a big hello but she didn’t reciprocate. I still thought she was so beautiful and sexy.

JW: How long were you in the country-club band?CS: Until I graduated from high school a year later in 1948. When I graduated I thought I’d study at the University of Pennsylvania or take home courses. Instead I joined a society band led by trombonist Herbie Collins that played at the Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia and other hotels in the chain. I learned quickly how to call key changes—two fingers for B-flat and so on. Most everything I sang was in two or three flats.

JW: Did you enjoy the work?CS: It was tough. I was expected to behave as they did, which was pretty square. There was no room for phrasing while singing. But I stayed with the band for a couple of years. Herbie decided I would be his woman and I was hung up on him. That was all brand new to me. I looked sophisticated but I really wasn’t.

JW: Where did you work next?CS: I worked with Bob Kay, another society bandleader who played the fiddle at a different hotel in Philadelphia. I was spoiled. I was young and cocky, and Bob was the only guy who hadn’t fallen down for me, which I guess was arresting on some level. We started dating and I married him in 1950. [Photo above of Carol Stevens in the '60s]

JW: How did it go?CS: Five years into the marriage, things got hard. I fell into that “Let's get married” thing. Back then, if you were a 20-year-old woman, you felt your options were going to dwindle by the year. So I had said "yes." It was a miserable marriage. He was 15 years older than me and lived with his mother. Just when I couldn’t take it anymore and realized we needed to get a divorce, I discovered I was pregnant. I had David just before we divorced and I had custody.

JW: Your life must have gotten difficult quickly, yes?CS: After my divorce from Bob, I was in a terrible state. I felt I had failed at everything. I just sat around catatonic for a while at my parents' house taking care of David. Three months after the divorce in 1956, my mother sensed I was dying on the vine, so she packed my trunk and shipped it to New York, telling me to go up there and make something of myself. She took care of David.

JW: How was New York?CS: Great. I began hanging out with theatrical people at Jilly’s Saloon. I used to hang around the piano and sing. A friend said that arranger-pianist Phil Moore would flip for me. She called Phil and touted me. I met him at his studio in Carnegie Hall. We talked and I sang a few songs. He asked if I was hungry and we went down for dinner.

JW: What happened next?CS: Phil asked me what I wanted from him. I flipped. I was living just a block away from Carnegie Hall. I told him I wanted to sing. He took care of everything, lining up gigs, sending me off to dance lessons and arranging for an album with Atlantic. Esquire magazine even did a three-page spread on Carnegie Hall's rehearsal studios and I was in it. [Photo above of Carol Stevens, foreground, stretching]

JW: Who did you work with?CS: Many different pianists. I did several gigs with Bill Evans before he became really well known. He was with Don Elliott at the time. Bill was great. I did a few club dates with him outside of New York. One gig was in Princeton, N.J. and was reviewed in a magazine called Escapade. There was a picture of me and Bill. [Pictured: Phil Moore on piano and John Levy on bass]

JW: How did the album That Satin Doll come about in February and March 1957 for Atlantic? CS: Phil lined it up. When I got there, I was knocked out by the guys on the session. [Editor’s note: featured on the dates were Nick Travis (tp), Don Elliott (tp,mellophone), Warren Covington and Eddie Bert (tb), Phil Bodner (eng-hrn,cl), Sol Schlinger (b-cl), Bernie Kaufman (b-cl,fl), Herbie Mann (alto-fl), Romeo Penque (woodwinds), Bobby Rosengarden (vib), Phil Moore and Frank Berry (p), Barry Galbraith (g), Milt Hinton (b), Osie Johnson (d) and Phil Kraus (perc).]

We cut the album in four sessions. I was in awe of the guys. They were generous, convivial and fun to work with, not to mention outstanding. Some of the arrangements by Phil were a surprise, especially Satin Doll.

JW: You had an unusual singing style, akin in some ways to Sarah Vaughan’s moaning, humming style.CS: I listened a lot to instrumentalists. I loved Bill Harris’ solo on Everywhere. I just loved it. I told Phil I wanted that song on the album. He orchestrated it for me. When I sang it, I became Bill’s trombone. All of my friends in New York thought I should be an actor. Singing to me was always about the story being related through the lyrics.

JW: What happened when That Satin Doll came out?CS: I received great reviews in Billboard and other publications. They couldn’t have been better.

[Editor’s note: Here’s one of those reviews... "CAROL STEVENS is a deep-purple (D below middle C) jazz singer who wears wicked black sheaths and Vampira makeup, and is visually and musically the most striking of the new girl singers. Her audiovisual analogue would be a bass sax wrapped in a lace nightie. Using a vocabulary of oo's, ee's and ah's, she sings one entire side of her first LP (That Satin Doll; Atlantic) almost completely without words. This could sound like a cat trapped in a rain barrel, but somehow manages not to. In the best of her all-but-wordless songs (the composer, Phil Moore, calls the technique "Woman-as-an-Instrument"), Carol fogs out three minutes of lowdown vowels, then wraps it up with wacky sexiness in a single phrase of explicit English: "Saved it all for you." Titles on the reverse side—Lying in the Hay, Keep on Doin' What You're Doin'—leave little doubt as to what it is all about." [Photo above of Phil Moore conducting in the studio]

Tomorrow: Part 2 of my interview wtih Carol along with the full video clip of After Hours, featuring Carol with Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge and other greats.

About

Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of a Song" (Grove) and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax is a two-time winner of the Jazz Journalists Association's best blog award.